Corree Delabrue has been organizing the Stikine Birding Festival in Wrangell since 2011.

Talk on the Rock is KSTK’s live call-in show. Every Tuesday at 1pm we welcome a local guest to discuss events and topics of interest to our little island town. For this week’s episode, host June Leffler spoke with Corree Delabrue. Corree organizes the annual Stikine River Birding Festival. This year the festival is cancelled, but the birds are still coming to Wrangell Island and the Stikine Delta as they normally would. Corree mentioned some recent, unique bird sightings: snow geese and the osprey raptor. And the usual sightings you can see, and hear, from your own backyard this time of year.

Birding is a lifelong pursuit of learning how to identify different species, and then finding them out in the wild. Corree says she does a little homework before her bird outings. She recommends using an online field guide to recap what some of the more common birds look and sound like. Then take your paper guide with you as go out searching. She also has a neat trick for remembering bird calls.